Pierre Hermé: Mille-feuille Infiniment Caramel

Tried to run past P. La Vie Douce, but did not make it before they closed at 7 pm, so then I ran down to the Akasaka Palace course and did one lap. I broke it down into 8 parts to try to get a feeling for how to balance the different sections with their different grades, though some parts that I measured had varying grades (the fastest 200 m is lumped with a flat and then slight upslope 200 m). Overall, I was 8.5 km/h, but over the 3.3 km course, my speeds on parts from 170 m to 800 m long corresponding to major corners or (barricaded) entrances varied from 9.5 km/h to 7.4 km/h (actually, these two parts follow each other in that order, before and after the turn at the southeast corner). It'll try to learn the different distances for the parts and calculate ahead of time what I need to aim for in future training runs, but it's going to take some practice.

For cake, I had gone to Pierre Hermé and gotten the Mille-feuille Infiniment Caramel, which is one of their monthly "Fetish" cakes, so it will be gone in about a week and a half (they start each Fetish late in the calendar month). This was definitely excellent, being a mille-feuille with caramel flavored mascarpone cream as the filling. It was not disappointing, but it did not seem to surpass their 2000 Feuilles, which would be hard to do.

Frédéric Cassel: Petite Gateau Juliette

Ran again to Ginza; really, one knee is telling me, I ran too much, though not specifically at the place where I was having trouble most recently. I ran 11 km at 10 km/h, which is too much and too fast. In fact, it's over budget until I adjust to make 10 km/h the new normal (though that still means my 9 km/h budget only counts 90% of the 10 km/h budget, so I sort of wipe out my previous gain in distance for the speed). I expect I'll slow down Saturday, but I still won't have a lot of distance left for Sunday if I follow my plan for a longer run to a new shop (I could use a shorter route, but not on roads I want to use).

Cake today was from Frédéric Cassel (フレデリック カッセル), the Petite Gateau Juliette (プティ・ガトー ジュリエット; 756 yen), which is mascarpone cream with strawberry and pistachios on top of cream cheese mouse, over a layer of pistachio crème brûlée (wouldn't have guessed that, but don't really know much about crème brûlée), on top of a thin strawberry layer, on (soft) biscuit. It was definitely excellent. Wouldn't mind making it myself, although the strawberry layer did not hold the upper layers in place, so it's good that I didn't try to run with this cake. This is "Petite" because there is a Christmas cake size of this. There were three other cakes that I haven't had before, but if the next is not great, I'll reorganize my rankings of shops putting this one with the current "near-great" shops, although I should probably call them something else if "great" just means having all or mostly chocolate cake. Unfortunately, it's not obvious how to rank adjectives. Maybe  "decent", "good", "very good", "exceptional", "superb", and "best" for what are now covered by "good", "excellent", "near-great", and "great".

Frédéric Cassel: Mille-feuille Vanille Mexico

No surprise, that last weekend was probably too much and I was sorer than I wanted to be, so rested yesterday and tried to keep it slower: 5.5 km/h for 5 km out (then walking underground), and 5 km/h for 3.8 km coming back (didn't count after the supermarket).

The cake was, as planned, I got the Mille-feuille Vanille Mexico from Frédéric Cassel at Ginza Mitsukoshi for 777 yen. It's vanilla mascarpone cream in their standard mille-feuille form, and though I always want a stronger vanilla taste, this was creamy and delicious mille feille, and ultimately great: I want it again.

Yesterday, I had another chocolate from Henri le Roux, the Noisetine Noir, which was excellent.

(Thursday) Frédéric Cassel: Tarte Pêches

7 km running at 7'-8'/km pace, w. 1:4 walking, okay, except pauses about the same as intersection stops, so timing not really needed for cake running.

Tendinitis in left hand, very bad. Must do research: doctor's electric current treatment, suspicious.

Frédéric Cassel: Tarte Pêches @ 648 yen.  Excellent inspiration (monthly special).  Weak, thin, hard shell holds shape of mascarpone cream. Delirious (red/Western) peach, also little unknown red fruit (raspberry?) filling.

Très Calme: Ebene, Savarin Orange, Soleil

Over a couple days, I had a few more cakes from Très Calme, all good but none excellent. I also had the Mont Blanc again, which I might reclassify as excellent, but I should again emphasize that it is probably only excellent/great if you're not that into chestnut flavor, so the mildness in a meringue is a nice surprise.

The Ebene (my guess from the name  エベーヌ) is chocolate, like almost a block of chocolate on, although the bottom is not quite that hard, so I would probably a ganache, maybe with blackberry, since there is a blackberry on top and blackberry is not such a strong flavor that it would dominate chocolate. It's very similar to a chocolate tart. I've already thrown out all my receipts, but these were all 500+ yen with tax.

The Soleil was quick choice when I found out that there was no Mont Blanc. It is (mascarpone) cheese, I think with red fruit (strawberry and maybe raspberry shown). Also good. 

Finally, on the second day when we went back to get the promised Mont Blanc, we also go Savarin Orange. I hadn't see a Savarin in a class before, but obviously you need something to keep the rum in the sponge, so I have no objections and the orange worked well. Again, good.

Pierre Hermé: Céleste

After yesterday's disappoint, I went to Pierre Hermé at Isetan. Probably I should finish off trying their regular cakes, since there will always be a new "fetish" of the month, but this month's sounded good, so I went with the signature one, the Céleste for 756 yen. This is a sablé base with strawberry and rhubarb confit (basically strawberry slices in sauce). Next up is mascarpone cream flavored with passion fruit, meringue on top, and a whole strawberry. It was definitely excellent cake, although it was not so great that I won't be able to resist sampling the other cakes in this series and visit other shops. No doubt, there will be something good next month as well, if I make it over there again.

But I skipped the running: as planned, despite knee discomfort, I ran. Not sure if that was bad or not: I get discomfort from sitting at my desk, or from my commuting walk, but less than before, I think. At some point, it is not clear what will make things better. I only ran 1 km, in 7'20'' and it does not seem worse than before, but that's been the case for some time. I'll see how things are through tomorrow night.